The disclosed subject matter relates to systems and methods for fraud prevention, supply-chain tracking, secure material, object or organism tracing and information encoding (collectively referred to as “trace element encoding” or “tracing”).
Marking valuable items, which can include liquids, gases, solids, gels, crystals, quasi-crystals, metals, alloys, other raw materials, plastics, mechanical parts, fuel, medicines, food, drinks, or any other suitable materials, can facilitate identification, authentication, fraud prevention, supply-chain tracking of the items. Various techniques to identify, trace, track, age, mark, serially number, or otherwise label valuable items and/or stocks of items can be utilized. For example, marking of solid items can involve applying a physical label, such as a stamp, tag, etching, plaque or the like, which can include relevant information about the origin of the item, such as the logo of the manufacturer, serial number, date of production and place of origin. However, such physical labels can be relatively easily forged or removed, and can contain limited information about the item. As such, counterfeit items can be made to appear as genuine valuable items, and this illegal practice can have a negative economic impact on producers and consumers of genuine items.
Marking valuable items in the form of a liquid or gas, including perfume, industrial supplies, gasoline or natural gas, can involve adding visible and/or scented dyes to the item. However, such dyes can be obtained and utilized or removed by counterfeiters, can devalue the product, and also can include relatively limited information about the origin of the item. Furthermore, manufacturing such dyes typically utilizes complex machinery, which can result in centralized production and distribution of the dyes. As such, modification of coded information in dyes can be difficult, and encoding each product individually can also be challenging.
Therefore, there remains an opportunity for systems and methods for marking valuable items that are secure, permanent, difficult to forge, traceable, easy to modify, can be unique to individual products, and can include a large amount information about the item and its components.